LEPINE, PARIS, CIRCA 1785

This clock, after a model introduced in Paris in the 1780s, celebrates Love's triumph by evoking the 'Feast of Bacchus' with a reclining nymph raising a wine-tazza, on a vine-festooned palanquin borne by Cupid-driven and grape-eating bacchic goats. Other versions of this model are illustrated in H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol.I, p.280, fig.4.13.1; and G. Wannenes, Le Pi Belle Pendole Francesi - Da Luigi XIV all'Impero, Milan, 1991, p. 89.

Related clocks were sold Christie's, London, 12 June 2003, lot 1072 and The P. C. Spaans Collection of Important Clocks, Christie's, Amsterdam, 19 December 2007, lot 471, (also with the unusual Roman and Arabic hour combination).

Jean Antoine Lepine (1720-1814) was Watchmaker to Louis XV, Louis XVI and Napoleon I. He was highly talented and invented several of the refinements in French watchmaking in the second half of the 18th Century. In 1765 he married Andre Caron's daughter and worked as 'Caron et Lepine' until 1769.

There are several clocks by him in the British Royal collection and Jagger writes (C. Jagger, Royal Clocks, The British Monarchy and its Timekeepers, London, 1983 p.164) '[Lepine] was a favorite clockmaker in George IV's estimation and a number of clocks were bought from him'. In 1783 Lepine left his business to his son-in-law, Claude Pierre Raguet, who continued to sign his clocks 'Lepine' and apparently begun numbering them from 4000.